Electronic signing (E-signing) solutions are extensively used these days to sign a wide variety of agreements such as business rental agreements, house lease agreements, loan agreements, debt settlement agreements, investment agreements, purchase agreements, vendor agreements, licensing agreements, and so on. The areas where electronic signing is being used are endless, as it provides a convenient and time-efficient alternative to physically signing a document. Many E-signing solutions simply e-mail an electronic document to an individual for execution. After the user executes the electronic document, the user can simply attach it to an e-mail response to the sending party. E-mailing such documents can present a security risk in so far as the potential for an e-mail response, and any supporting personal information, to be intercepted by an unintended, malicious recipient.
In some of the agreements mentioned, in which two parties generally sign, there may be a requirement to have a signing party qualify before he or she can sign an agreement. Such requirements can include a credit score and history check, a criminal background record check, residency verification, income verification, presence of a guarantor, and/or sensitive personal information, to name just a few.
At present, these requirements and associated documents and records require an offline detour for individuals who must satisfy these requirements. In addition to the security risks posed by e-mail exchanges in this context, off-line detours can, in turn, lead to delays and inefficiencies in completing an agreement. As an example of an offline detour during an e-signing workflow process, consider the following. When leasing a house, the leasing authority or the landlord may require a guarantor to guarantee the timely payment of rent and other tenancy obligations. The leasing authority will often not know the party who is participating as a guarantor or as a signing party. Hence, it becomes important for the leasing authority to verify the credit history and credit score or credit worthiness of the guarantor and/or the signing party. The credit history, however, may not be easily obtainable by the leasing authority. That is, the leasing authority must contact the guarantor outside the flow of the e-signing workflow process and request confidential data. This confidential data, if shared over e-mail, may be lost, stolen or misused.
Further, as a result of the offline detour, the requirements and documents are typically tracked outside the e-signing workflow process, and there is usually no audit trail detailing whether the records were produced, what those records were, when the records were produced and/or whether the records were checked and by whom prior to signing of an agreement. For example, the leasing authority may keep the agreement in one location and may keep any associated guarantor information in another location, with no real association or link between the agreement and the guarantor information and supporting information showing that the information was obtained and verified.
Such a gap between documents can lead to problems and complications if a dispute arises with respect to a particular agreement, particularly if the guarantor information is lost.